The People Have Not Spoken

Looking like an injured smurf

We have heard plenty of lies before the election and now we're hearing that biggest of lies we hear after every election: that the 'people' have spoken. This is plainly bullshit of the highest order. As a Liberal/LibDem voter in a safe Conservative seat all my life I'm well aware that my voice has never been heard.

Instead, what has happened is that a few people in marginal seats have spoken. I live in West Sussex, and The Voter Power Index tells me that "In Horsham, one person does not really have one vote, they have the equivalent of 0.143 votes". Thanks a bunch. Meanwhile voters in Swansea West have 1.115 votes. That's nearly 8 times more voting power than me! Newspapers offer lists of key marginals, well aware that no-one cares what's happening on the hustings in Horsham or Bootle.

Capturing those few people has for many years been the task of the party campaign managers, and in 2019 the Tories were most successful at this, managing to capture many target seats and more, and Labour/LibDems least successful. But it wasn't completely down to Tory electioneering, or the Jeremy Corbyn effect. It was down to a unilateral pro-Tory-Brexit strategy from the Brexit Party (not standing in Tory held seats) and a refusal of the Labour Party and the LibDems to respond to that move. This was entirely predictable, of course.

One of the first seats to declare is a prime example. Blyth Valley has been Labour since it was created in 1950, but Labour lost by 700 votes, with a swing to the Tories of 10%. But that swing would not have lost them the seat by itself. The Brexit Party did not stand down here, taking 8% of the vote, because many of their votes came from Labour. The LibDems took 5%, and the Greens 3%, both pointlessly. Any sensible anti-Brexit strategy would have seen Labour home.

Another example is Guildford:

Here the problem was that Labour took nearly 8% and anti-no-dealer ex-Tory Anne Milton took 7%. If just half of those voters had gone with the LibDem candidate then the Tory would have lost. Furthermore, if a Brexit Party candidate had stood that would have taken another thousand or two at least from the Tories.

I have been predicting since last summer that the UK would suffer a no deal Brexit, or a hard Brexit at least, and that still holds true after the first past the post electoral system delivered a mandate for a hard Brexit against the wishes of the majority of the electorate. 52% of the vote went to pro-EU/second referendum parties.

This will cause problems for years. Dissatisfaction with Brexit will rise, as the inherent difficulties of leaving the European Union are worked out, the promised benefits don't materialise, but the costs do. (This will at least be a slower process than if we had crashed out without a Withdrawal Agreement, so we can be thankful for small mercies.) Remember that no Brexit deal will command the support of the majority of the population - Johnson will face dissatisfaction from the majority Remain population and the many Brexiteers who don't like whatever arrangement he finally settles on. That will include the large rump of Brexit Party supporters left without a vote when they withdrew their candidates from Tory seats.

Then the fear is that this populist authoritarian new Tory Party carry out their threats to fix elections for ever in their favour, with boundary changes and a strengthening of their grip on the press and broadcast media that has helped them deliver this mandate. I honestly don't know what can stop them, if they can avoid being blamed for the inevitable problems of the next five years. And certainly the press, the BBC and ITV are showing no willingness to speak truth to power any longer.

So, no, democracy has not been delivered with this election result. Far from it.

Addendum:

Some statistics which highlight the lack of democracy in the UK 2019 General Election:

Conservatives, increase in popular vote: 329,881
Conservatives, increase in seats: 48

LibDems, increase in popular vote: 1,324,562
LibDems, increase in seats: -1

Greens, increase in popular vote: 340,032
Greens, increase in seats: 0

The Greens increased their popular vote by more than the Conservatives, but it resulted in no more seats.

Addendum 2:

Here is master psephologist John Curtice raising the issue of the illegitimacy of the election as a way of settling the Brexit question:

John Curtice: Remain parties and Remainers are in the majority, but FPTP and no Remain Alliance is how Johnson won.

pic.twitter.com/318FGbtf5p

— Simon Gosden. Esq. #fbpe 🕷 (@g_gosden) December 13, 2019

Addendum 3:

Martin Sandbu in the Financial Times writes:

Boris Johnson won last week’s election not by getting more people to vote Conservative — he only improved on Theresa May’s 2017 vote share by about a percentage point — but by getting the right people to vote Tory, and by getting a lot more people to stop voting Labour (with good help from Nigel Farage and the Brexit party). Given the UK’s first-past-the-post voting system, the Conservative vote was much more effectively distributed in this election, so by trading an almost equal number of urban Remain voters for northern small-town Leave voters, Johnson converted a near-stagnant vote share into a landslide of parliamentary seats.

https://www.ft.com/content/0b64a206-2013-11ea-92da-f0c92e957a96

Some recommended further reading:

Professor Chris Grey, The Brexit dystopia bequeathed by this election.

Philosopher Jonathan Pearce, Brexit, the Media, Scotland and FPTP, Political Ignorance, Deunionisation

Professor Simon Wren-Lewis, Who to blame for Johnson winning?

Prof. Dr. Eric Schliesser, On Johnson's Victory.

Philosopher Philip Goff, Corbyn not Corbynism was to Blame: My View on UK Election

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It's 'Elf and Safety Gone Mad!

Well, contra the cliché, this is what health and safety gone mad really looks like:

A trapped resident tries to get help as the fire engulfs the Grenfell Tower block.
(c) Universal News and Sport (Europe)

It can lead to disadvantaged men, women and children being burnt alive in their own homes. It appears undeniable now that the Grenfell disaster is down to a failure in regulations somewhere.

Philosopher Jonathan Pearce highlights the narrative that makes life that little bit worse for the poor and vulnerable in our society, and which can lead to tragedies like this one, following George Monbiot in The Guardian:

But what is regulation? I think when the word is used, people really don’t think about what it is. Regulation means rules. Why do we have rules? Rules are moral proclamations about how the world should be. Regulation is codified morality. In shorthand, then, when people claim they want “deregulation”, they are actually asking for less morality, fewer moral rules.

And he links it to the movement that has brought us Brexit:

What regulation does (when done properly) is seek to make production ethically responsible, which is better for everyone. A company in Europe, now, cannot employ children, must have strict safety regulations such that the product won’t be faulty enough to blow up or catch fire, must be produced by a workforce that has minimum legislation for workers’ rights, and so on. These regulations work best when adopted by multiple countries across a wide platform. There is a uniformity for everyone such that no one in that marketplace can get away with not adhering to them.

... 

Now, with the UK, we are leaving a large regulatory network that has historically given us a massive amount of regulation. And this is a good thing [he means the network is a good thing, not the leaving!]. Either we take that all on (and manage that at a higher cost), or we drop some or lots of it. We become a low-tax haven full of corporations who define the rules of play. 

For at least the last 20 years, in my memory, there has been the constant narrative that we are all pandered, soft somehow, because we have 'elf and safety regulations, and that businesses should be allowed to carry on their trade without so many restrictions. Here's David Cameron responding to that retrograde sentiment in 2012, saying he will "kill off the health and safety culture for good":

He said:

I don't think there's any one single way you can cut back the health and safety monster.

You've got to look at the quantity of rules - and we're cutting them back; you've got to look at the way they're enforced - and we are making sure that is more reasonable; we're taking self-employed people out of whole classes of health and safety regulation.

... 

But the key about health and safety is not just the rules, the laws and regulations - it's also the culture of fear many businesses have about health and safety.

Rather than referring to the 'health and safety monster' he should have been challenging this shibboleth of the right and championing health and safety as a good and necessary feature of a properly functioning society.

Sadly, it looks like it's not only the health and safety culture he and his ilk have killed off.

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